The intemperate, even violent tone in recent criticisms of faith is quite striking. Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens: They seem an agitated crew, quick to caricature, quick to denounce, quick to slash away at what they take to be the delusions and conceits of faith. And the phenomenon is not strictly . . . . Continue Reading »
Someone must have arranged this. It’s as if Frank Schaeffer’s book Crazy for God was designed to come out in tandem with Jody Bottum’s essay “The Judgment of Memory” in the March issue of First Things . It’s as if Crazy for God was published merely to illustrate all the . . . . Continue Reading »
Steven D. Smith, professor of law at the University of San Diego, has an admirable review of Martha Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality in the February issue of First Things . Since I agree with everything Professor Smith said, it is . . . . Continue Reading »
Benedict XVI recently asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to turn its attention to the ethical challenges that new biotechnologies pose. Aware that the Church “cannot and should not intervene on every scientific innovation,” the pope charged the congregation with . . . . Continue Reading »
The pope has John Allen worried. In a column published in the New York Times , Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter , frets that Pope Benedict will offend during his upcoming address to the United Nations General Assembly. After all, “this cerebral pope has a track . . . . Continue Reading »
My reflexive response on reading Diana West’s The Death of the Grown-up has been to keep announcing magisterially to all and sundry that I am one. Pass the salt, because I said so, and I am a grown-up. “We know ,” the children reply wearily, which is a relief. After all, I’ve . . . . Continue Reading »
On any given Sunday in Manhattan, before and after theater matinees, visits to museums, and walks in Central Park, some five thousand mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings gather at one of three Redeemer Presbyterian worship sites to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. More specifically, they gather to . . . . Continue Reading »
The more cynical may say it is a small price to pay for achieving the stature of intellectual celebrity, but Francis Fukuyama took some very hard knocks after the publication of his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man . Some critics took the “end of history” part of the title . . . . Continue Reading »
In his meditation on the sources of human community, “ Death and Politics ,” Jody Bottum makes a case for the foundational importance of death, mourning, and the grave. The dark universality of grief, he argues, glues us together. “We create true communities,” Bottum writes, . . . . Continue Reading »
We all complain at times about the tiresome discussions of the shifting meanings of left and right , liberal and conservative . Every publishing season, or so it seems, somebody comes along with a book that proclaims “and now for something completely different.” Such books appear under the . . . . Continue Reading »
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